TO MIECZYSLAW GRYDZEWSKI 3 page

M. Y. Elsewhere³⁶| Oct. 11 [1951]. nearly Athens.

Dear Elisabeth,

I was so disappointed not to get to Istanbul & do tell Rodney how sorry I am for all the trouble I must have given him with my cables. We got as far as Skiathos, an island in the Sporades, & there northeast gales stopped us for three days – there was no sign of a change (one Greek ship was lost off Lemnos), so we had to break south again. I’d have so loved seeing you all – & the ship’s company might have amused you – Korda, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh & Margot Fonteyn. I’ve lost my heart to the last, though she’s only sporadically pretty, but she likes cheap cafés & retsina wine & is a companion spirit. ‘Larry’ I like very much, & Vivien – who was terribly actressy for the first three days – is now great fun. We play endless canasta & eat enormous meals & drink a lot.

[…]

TO FRANCIS GREENE

c/o British Consulate, | Hanoi, | Indo-China, | Nov. 16 [1951]

Dear Francis,

I wonder how you are & how things are going. I’d love to get a letter in this hot & rather dull town.

I haven’t had a very interesting time so far. The most amusing has been 24 hours with a bombing squadron. I went on two missions. The first was to bomb & machine gun round a town which the Communists had captured. My aircraft went alone. Tiny little cockpit, just room for the pilot (who was also gunner & bomber), the navigator & me – an hour’s flight each way & then three quarters of an hour over the objective. We did 14 dives. It was most uncomfortable, coming rapidly & steeply down from 9000 to 3000 feet. You were pressed forward in your seat & then as you zoomed up again your stomach was pressed in. I began to get used to it after about four dives.

Coming back we went down to about 200 feet & shot up a sampan on the Red River.

Next day I went in a formation of three aircraft & we tried to cut a road – I don’t think we managed it. This was quite comfortable horizontal bombing at 5000 feet. The leader made two circuits, dropping our trial bomb each time. Then we closed up nearly wing to wing, & sent down three sticks of bombs. It was interesting to watch them drift diagonally below one.

My next trip I want to see the naval boats at work among the islands.

It’s very very hot & difficult to write letters, so would you let Mummy see this one if you think she’d be interested in bombing!

Lots of love,

Daddy.

Greene returned to these scenes in The Quiet American (142), adding details he spared his son: ‘Down we went again, away from the gnarled and fissured forest towards the river, flattening out over the neglected ricefields, aimed like a bullet at one small sampan on the yellow stream. The cannon gave a single burst of tracer, and the sampan blew apart in a shower of sparks; we didn’t even wait to see our victims struggling to survive, but climbed and made for home. I thought again as I had thought when I saw the dead child at Phat Diem, “I hate war.” There had been something so shocking in our sudden fortuitous choice of a prey – we had just happened to be passing, one burst only was required, there was no one to return our fire, we were gone again, adding our little quota to the world’s dead.’³⁷

TO CATHERINE WALSTON

[near Macau] |Christmas Day [1951], 10.10 a.m.

[…]

There is so much to tell you. I thought I was going to disappear for four weeks with a Foreign Legion officer, but it didn’t come off. However I got where no newspaper man was allowed, into surrounded Phat-Diem – the rebels all round within 600 yards, flames, far too many corpses for my taste, & constant mortar fire. One slept in one’s clothes in a half wrecked mess with a revolver on the pillow. The bodies, especially those of a poor woman & her small boy who had got in the way of war, drove me to confession. So I went to the Cathedral where the whole town had taken refuge & found my friend, the Belgian priest, quietly reading his breviary at the top of the bell tower. But the French quite absurdly believed him to be a Viet Minh spy, so my friendship with him made me suspect again, & they edged me out. Also I’d gate crashed into a small operation with the parachutists, (on land!) & they weren’t happy about that.

[…]

Greene wrote in The Quiet American (45): ‘Twenty yards beyond the farm buildings, in a narrow ditch, we came on what we sought: a woman and a small boy. They were very clearly dead: a small neat clot of blood on the woman’s forehead, and the child might have been sleeping. He was about six years old and he lay like an embryo in the womb with his little bony knees drawn up. “Mal chance,” the lieutenant said.’

TO FRANCIS GREENE

5 St. James’s Street | London S.W. 1 | Wed. [n.d.]

Dear Francis,

I wish I had seen more of you the other day – I was too busy with ‘affairs of no earthly importance’ & now it looks as if I shall see nothing of you this holidays. Remember to send me your blue card for next term, & let’s see also – if you feel like it – whether we can plan a small trip together somewhere queer or interesting on the Continent in the summer holidays. I mean two males together! Have you any views?

In any case a lot of love,

G.

TO DENIS CANNAN

The playwright Denis Cannan (b. 1919) collaborated with Pierre Bost (1901–75) on the dramatic version of The Power and the Glory. Greene revised the script before it was staged at the Phoenix in London in 1956 with Paul Scofield (b. 1922) in the lead, directed by Peter Brook (b. 1925).

24th April 1952

Dear Denis,

I have now got as far as the last scene in your new draft and have made very few corrections indeed. About the last scene, however, I feel extremely doubtful. The trouble is that this scene should really contain the whole dialectic of the play and should be some kind of a debate between the Lieutenant and the Priest with the two points of view clearly but not bluntly expressed. In the book one used the device of the two men first being held up by rain before going back to the city, and afterwards of the night’s lodging on the way to the city. This was a reasonable setting for what is really a dialogue between two mystics. What I feel about your draft is that the dialectic has become a little too plain [?] and explanatory, and therefore not very dramatic, while at the same time most of the space is given to dramatic incident. The drama of this last scene surely from the moment of the Lieutenant’s arrival must be only the drama of dialectic. I would very much like if it is possible for us to meet and discuss this in detail with the book as well as the play in front of us.

You may have been puzzled by some of my small changes in the dialogue in the scenes I gave back to you. In several cases I went back to the dialogue of the book because I felt that in order to make the meaning clear to the audience you had sometimes lost the dramatic mystical flash. A religious idea is often a paradoxical one and I don’t feel that one wants to smooth out the paradox too much. I remember an awful Jesuit once giving a long sermon in Farm Street to explain away the statement about there being more rejoicing in heaven over two sinners being penitent than over ninety-nine just men. By the time the priest had finished he had reduced the paradox to a very reasonable statement by the headmaster of a public school. I don’t of course mean that in any place you went as far as this!

Yours,
Graham

TO LADY DIANA COOPER

In July 1952 the politician, diplomat and author Duff Cooper (1890–1954) was created 1st Viscount Norwich. His wife was the memoirist and socialite Lady Diana Cooper (née Manners) (1892–1986). She did not use the title Viscountess Norwich since she thought it rhymed with porridge. After his retirement as Ambassador to France in 1947, they lived in Chantilly (ODNB). Graham and Lady Diana Cooper were both close friends of Evelyn Waugh.

5 St. James’s Street | London S.W. 1 | June 6 [1952]

My dear Diana,

First a thousand congratulations to both of you. Seldom does one feel so wholeheartedly pleased. So many of my generation have been Duff fans ever since his magnificent Munich resignation.³⁸What a lot of plaudits there will be too from the dead as well as from the living.

I got back from Italy yesterday & found your card. Well, it is true in a way, but really the villa is in Anacapri &, for foreign consumption, it is owned by the Societa Anacapri! I would have liked to let it – except to you & Duff to whom I’d love to lend it any time. It’s very quiet & simple with one maid who cooks rather inadequately, shops & launders – perhaps adequately. There are 2 little houses in a small but pretty garden under the slope of Monte Solario. One house has one double bedded room, one single bedded room & bathroom. The other has one double bedded room, one single, living room, dining room, bathroom & kitchen. It will be empty from now until nearly the end of July.

Catherine will want me to send her love. We hope to be in Paris for a couple of days at the end of July with her sister, to coincide with Harold Acton whom we all love dearly. Can we come & see you if you are at Chantilly?

Devotedly,
Graham

TO HERBERT GREENE

5 St. James’s Street | London S.W. 1 | 17th June 1952

Dear Herbert,

I am sending a lot of pants and vests etc. which I weeded out in going through my drawers. I don’t suppose any of it fits you but I am sending it on the chance. The queer stains on some are due to a broken bottle of Chinese wine!

Love
Graham

TO MARY PRITCHETT

At the suggestion of Robert McClintock, an American diplomat in Brussels, Graham attempted to execute a piece of mischief against the American government. He revealed in a Time magazine cover-story (29 October 1951) that he had been a member of the Communist Party for six weeks while a student at Oxford. This put him, as a religious and literary celebrity, on the wrong side of the McCarran Act, which attempted to keep Communists and other subversives out of the United States. In early 1952 he was denied the usual twelve-month visa and given instead a three-month one. In the United States he spoke to various newspapers about the danger of McCarthyism. By September he was planning a return visit and new provocations.³⁹

12th September 1952

Dear Mary,

Partly for the fun of baiting your authorities and partly because I think it would be useful from the point of view of the play, I wish to apply for a six-month’s visa for the U.S.A. with the ostensible object of visiting you sometime between January and April 1953. The authorities demand evidence that necessary funds for my maintenance are available while I am in the United States. This should take the form of a bank letter. Is it possible for you to procure a bank letter which would guarantee that I was supported whilst there? Naturally I can when the time approaches obtain the necessary travellers’ cheques from the Bank of England, but I want if possible to put the American authorities in the position of either granting me or refusing me a visa before the Elections in November so that I can stir up a little trouble if necessary! I cannot ask the Bank of England for the funds until the actual date of my journey is known and therefore I think your bank letter would be necessary to apply now. I do think from the point of view of the future it is necessary to clarify the situation with the U.S. authorities, and I hope you will help me. If it is possible for you to arrange some bank letter by return of post I should be grateful.

Affectionately,
Graham

Shortly after this letter he wrote a public protest against the treatment of Charlie Chaplin, who had lived for forty years in the United States. The Attorney General ordered that Chaplin be detained when he tried to re-enter the United States because of speeches he had given in support of Russia when it was invaded by Germany. Doubtless as a result of the publicity, Graham was himself granted a visa for only eight weeks.⁴⁰

TO EVELYN WAUGH

Villa Rosaio, | Anacapri, | October 2 [1952]

Dear Evelyn,

I’ve just finished Men At Arms, which I took with me to read in the relative peace of this place. I do congratulate you. You’re completely crazy when you think it not up to the mark – I think it may well be the beginning of your best book. Apthorpe outplays Crouchback in this part, but C. is such a good starter that one looks forward impatiently to the horses coming round again. As for style you’ve never, except in isolated passages written better, or, I believe, as well. This all sounds pompous & dogmatic, when all I want to say is thank you for a book I admire & love – & I’m no indiscriminate fan. There are two books of yours I don’t like!

It rains most of the time & Catherine is ill with bronchitis & I am 48 today – & I don’t like any of these inescapable facts. But I love Men at Arms.

Affectionately,
Graham

TO FRANÇOIS MAURIAC (TELEGRAM)

7 November 1952

A thousand congratulations. The Nobel jury have honoured themselves.⁴¹
Graham Greene

TO SIR ALEXANDER KORDA

The director George More O’Ferrall (1907–82) faced difficulty bringing the film of The Heart of the Matter to a close since a suicide by Scobie, played by Trevor Howard (1913–88), would not pass the censors. The script they came up with had Scobie in a parked car ready to shoot himself, when he sees a boy being beaten; he intervenes, only to be shot. His last words are, ‘Going on trek. Tell Missus, God made it all right for her.’ Graham felt this missed the point of the book.⁴²

17th December 1952

Dear Alex,

I had a very friendly and nice drink the other evening with Trevor Howard and George More O’Ferrall. The subject of the end of the film cropped up again and O’Ferrall was very ready that I should speak to you about it, although he doesn’t quite agree with my ideas. So I am making a last appeal to you!

The success of the book was partly based on the controversial aspect of the suicide and the priest’s reaction to it. Not only did his attitude come as a surprise to people but it also provided the book with something in the nature of a happy ending. In the last script I was shown the words of the priest were transposed so that they came in before the suicide and therefore had no particular force or validity. It was merely excusing a man for a deed he had not yet committed.

I know there is censorship trouble with the suicide, but I suggested to Dalrymple⁴³and to George More O’Ferrall at our last meeting before O’Ferrall went to West Africa the following means for evading the censorship difficulty and also getting over the full force of the book’s subject.

In an earlier scene of the script the doctor had referred to suicide and to the matter of angina pectoris which is undetectable in a postmortem. At the end Scobie can bear things no longer and decides to shoot himself. At the same time he wants to cover up the real motives of his suicide so as to give as little pain as possible. Having loaded his revolver therefore he sits down and writes a letter to his wife saying that the pain he has been secretly suffering proves to be angina and that he cannot face it any longer and asks her forgiveness for his cowardice. At this point he is called out on police duty to deal with Yusef and leaves his revolver behind. As in the present script he is shot, deliberately courting a bullet. Practically the only increase in length is that now his wife or Wilson finds the letter so that she knows he died with the full intention of suicide in his mind. We then have the priest’s commentary and rebuke of Mrs. Scobie as at the end of the book. Not only does the film become more controversial and more interesting, but the ending is far less melancholy than if we simply leave it at the death. O’Ferrall objects that this would mean probably at least one more day’s shooting if not two, but I would urge you to consider the wisdom of shooting it in this way even if on later consideration you cut it to the form it now takes.

Affectionately,

Graham

No change was made. Howard’s performance is generally regarded as brilliant, but the film inevitably suffers by comparison with the book.

TO DAVID JONES

The Welsh poet and painter David Jones (1895–1974) is best known for his long poem The Anathemata (1952), which depicts British history and mythology in terms of the Eucharist. He is regarded by some as a major, if neglected, figure.

5 St. James’s Street, | London S.W.1 | 23rd February 1953

Dear David,

Being a little drunk, as perhaps one should always be when reading a really new poem, please accept my homage for Anathemata. For weeks now it has been lying on a chair while I waited for the courage to read it. As one grows older one grows more and more disinclined to read a really new thing. One is afraid one won’t understand, which hurts one’s pride, (and there are great passages in your poem which I don’t understand), and one is afraid of being unduly disturbed. But please will you accept from me lying on a sofa, suffering from a bad cold, a sense of excitement which makes one mark passage after passage on page after page. I have read the ending with immense excitement, but I haven’t yet got to it. This is a silly letter, but anyway I shall be right out of the country before you receive it.

Yours,
Graham

TO R. K. NARAYAN

C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 19th November 1953

My dear Narayan,

I’ve been so glad to see first-class reviews of your novels recently in The New Yorker and other American papers. It’s taken a long time for your genius to come through to the public, but at last it really seems to be making itself felt.

I am going out again East this winter to Indo-China and it occurs to me that it might be possible for me to stop off at Calcutta on the way home and come down to Madras if there was a chance of seeing you. You know how much I should love to do that and how much I should love to see ‘Malgudi’, but I trust you as an old friend to tell me if it would be in any way difficult or awkward. Alas! politics thrust their way into every human relationship. Please let me trust you to tell me of any difficulty, just as you could trust me if you were living in London and rang up for a drink to say that I couldn’t manage it as I had somebody there with whom I wished to be alone! […]

TO LADY DIANA COOPER

Duff Cooper died of a haemorrhage 1 January 1954.

Hotel Majestic, | Saigon, | Jan. 2 [1954]

Dear Diana,

Please forgive an incoherent note. I have just read of Duff’s death. Why does one think selfishly of the loss to his friends & only after a second of time of his loss to you – the real loser? Perhaps because one knows you have him always, & we only had him for a few years. Do please not answer this silly inadequate note. When I get to Hanoi tomorrow, I’ll arrange for a Mass – you won’t mind, will you? It’s the expression – the only one we have – of the sense that life isn’t over.

Affectionately,
Graham Greene

TO EVELYN WAUGH

In a letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo (1877–1970), Secretary of the Holy Office, advised that The Power and the Glory had been ‘denounced to this Sacred Congregation. He noted indulgently that Greene was a convert, but observed that in the novel man’s wretchedness carries the day and that the work is injurious to thepriesthood. ‘The novel moreover portrays a state of affairs so paradoxical, so extraordinary and so erroneous as to disconcert unenlightened persons, who form the majority of the readers.’ Greene was instructed not to permit further editions or translations. In a letter of 2 May 1954, Waugh declared himself ready to join a demonstration on Greene’s behalf but assumed he would not want anything of the kind.

C.6 Albany, | London, W. 1. | May 3 [1954]

Dear Evelyn,

I was very touched by your generous letter & so complete an offer of help. I think however that for the time being – for the sake of the Church even, whom the Inquisitor may well injure in the eyes of non-Catholics – slowness & caution are required, two qualities I detest. Of course I doubt if the situation would ever have got this far without our Cardinal Kipps.⁴⁴

My answers go off this week, & if the Inquisitor proceeds to publication, then I will be very grateful for your support.

I can’t tell you how glad I was to get your letter. What a good friend you are!

Affectionately,
Graham

TO MONSIGNOR GIOVANNI BATTISTA MONTINI (LATER POPE PAUL VI)

With the advice of his friend Archbishop David Mathew (1902–75), a papal diplomat, Greene composed a ‘casuistical’ response and sent a copy to the cultured Montini (1897–1978), a future pope, who as Pro-Secretary of State was the most influential of Pope Pius XII’s advisers.⁴⁵

[6 May 1954]

Your Excellency will be aware of my profound and filial devotion to the person of the Sovereign Pontiff. I am therefore the more deeply disturbed by the difficulty which has arisen in regard to the judgment of the Holy Office in respect of my book, The Power and the Glory. I feel it is only right that I should send to Your Excellency a copy of a letter I have today addressed to His Eminence, Cardinal Pizzardo.

It is not that I ask Your Excellency for any comment on this matter which is so intimately painful to myself. I feel however that I should keep you informed on this question.

I remain with respect

Your Excellency’s devoted servant in Christ,
Graham Greene

Montini had already been involved – on 1 October 1953 he had written to Cardinal Pizzardo defending the book.⁴⁶

TO CARDINAL PIZZARDO

[c. 6 May 1954]

It is not without hesitation that I presume to address Your Eminence: but, in the present delicate situation, I have grounds, it seems to me, to present you with an account of the facts.

On 9 April, during an audience which His Eminence Cardinal Griffin, Archbishop of Westminster, granted me, he handed me the copy of a letter which Your Eminence had written to him on 16 November. The delay in the communication of this document is due to my absence from London: I was in Indochina, where I was doing my utmost to make world opinion, for which my articles are intended, understand the difficulties faced by the heroic Catholics of Indochina confronted with the Communist menace.

I wish to emphasize that, throughout my life as a Catholic, I have never ceased to feel deep sentiments of personal attachment to the Vicar of Christ, fostered in particular by admiration for the wisdom with which the Holy Father has constantly guided God’s Church. I have always been vividly impressed by the high spirituality which characterizes the Government of Pius XII. Your Eminence knows that I had the honour of a private audience during the holy year 1950. I shall retain my impression of it until my last breath. Your Eminence will therefore understand how distraught I am to learn that my book The Power and the Glory has been the object of criticism from the Holy Office. The aim of the book was to oppose the power of the sacraments and the indestructibility of the Church on the one hand with, on the other, the merely temporal power of an essentially Communist state.

May I remind Your Eminence that this book was written in 1938–39 before the menace which I myself witnessed in Mexico spread to Western Europe? I beg Your Eminence, in conclusion, to consider the fact that the book was published 14 years ago and, consequently, the rights have passed from my hands into those of publishers in different countries. In addition, the translations to which Your Eminence’s letter refers appeared for the most part several years ago and no new translation is envisaged.

I am sending His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster the names of the publishers concerned. They alone have the right to reprint.

I wish to assure Your Eminence of my profound respect for any communication emanating from the Sacred Congregation of the Index …

Your most humble and devoted servant
Graham Greene

The Vatican quietly allowed the matter to drop.

TO R. K. NARAYAN

C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 19th July 1954

My dear Narayan,

I am about half-way through making small corrections in your book and hope to finish this week. The only title I thought of so far is ‘Waiting For The Mahatma’ but I don’t think this will be a very popular title.⁴⁷

I was fascinated by the portrait you have drawn of Gandhi and that period in India’s history, the love story of Sriram and Bharati is charming, and the whole book will do you credit I am sure. I confess myself a little disappointed to find politics entering Malgudi if only because politics either date or become history, and I have always felt a kind of eternal quality in Malgudi.

Yours affectionately,
Graham

TO EVELYN WAUGH

C.6 Albany, | London, W. 1. | 17th August 1954

Dear Evelyn,

I always type my letters to you since the sad day when you couldn’t read my signature! I do wish I had been able to come to the fête which from the accounts in the various papers I have read seems to have been great fun for the populace if not for you. Have I ever seen Rossetti’s only nude or is it a new acquisition?

I am off tomorrow on the spur of the moment to Haiti to have ten days holiday there with Peter Brook and Natasha. Do you know them? I like them both, especially Natasha, very very much.

No, I don’t think you should share my indignation about Colette’sfuneral⁴⁸as the indignation was really whipped up by an extremely good lunch, a lot of alcohol and some French friends who are dear to me. I wasn’t really protesting against the lack of an official mass but only against the way in which the announcement was made, and surely if the relatives want it it’s possible to have a few prayers said at a grave-side without involving the church officially. I have a strong impression that something of this kind was done for Conrad who had also lived the greater part of his life outside the Church but on consulting Aubry’s Life there is no mention of death. Anyway I don’t think that my letter has done any harm as it has made the Archbishop write a letter in reply explaining exactly the reasons which will now be understood by non-Catholics.

Yours ever,
Graham

TO CATHERINE WALSTON

Will you keep this letter in case I need it to refresh my mind?

El Rancho Hotel | Port-Au-Prince, Haiti | Sunday, Aug. 30 [1954]

Dearest Cafryn,

I wonder if this will follow you to Ireland? Last night we were at a Voodoo ceremony until 3 in the morning. One reads about such things⁴⁹but to see them is incredible & terrifying. The first two hours were spent in a kind of parody of Catholic rites – a choir of white-clothed girls jigging & singing & responding, holy banners – one marked St. Jacques, the portrait of a saint, the kissing of crosses & vestments, endless prayers from the Houngan or priest recited in a Catholic way, the ‘fairy’ motions of a server, a kind of Asperges with a jug of water – the horrible really began when the Agape began – a procession carrying fuel & food & dishes & a live hen. The man carrying the hen swung it like a censer, & then would dash to this & that member of the congregation & plaster his face & body with the live bird (you can imagine how I felt about that!). More interminable prayers & then the bird’s feet were cracked off like cheese biscuits & the attendant put the live bird’s head in his mouth & bit it off– the body of course went on flapping while he squeezed the blood out of the trunk (a small black boy a little older than James watched it all solemnly).

The next startling thing was the initiations after the feast – the initiate wrapped in a sheet like a mummy was carried in on a man’s back to the cooking pit flames (extraordinary shadows), & one hand & one foot were drawn out of the cerements & held for as much as a quarter of a minute in the flames while the drummers drummed & the women shrieked their sacred songs. Last of all & quite suddenly (the intervals were filled with a kind of bacchanalian dancing) came ‘possession’. They believe that the various gods of war & love etc. start winging their way from Africa when the ceremony starts. They had taken about five hours to cross the Atlantic – & on this occasion it was the God of War. A man started staggering & falling & twisting. People held him up, twisted a scarlet cloth round his middle & put a rum bottle & a panga⁵⁰in his hand. Then he began to whirl around the room, falling & tripping & brandishing the axe; we had to leap up on benches to get out of the way. Sometimes he pressed the blunt end of the panga in someone’s stomach, & that man or woman knelt on the ground before him & kissed it, while he sprayed them with rum out of his mouth. Two of those got possessed too, but were quieted by the priest. I was glad when the man gave a shriek & collapsed, & the God had started back to Africa & the party was over.⁵¹

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